Nordic Semiconductor – Nordic flagship Bluetooth Smart protocol stack enables sophisticated Bluetooth Smart wearable hub networks with sensors that don't need smartphones
Ultra low power RF specialist Nordic Semiconductor ASA announced the launch of its most advanced, feature-rich Bluetooth® Smart (formerly known as Bluetooth low energy) protocol stack to date – the S130 SoftDevice – that allows the development of Nordic nRF51 Series SoC-based advanced wearable Bluetooth Smart hub network topologies such as smart watches with peripheral wireless sensors that don’t always need a smartphone present to operate.
The S130 SoftDevice is a Bluetooth 4.1 compliant protocol stack and includes all Bluetooth Smart protocol layers up to and including GATT/GAP. It supports multi-link central, peripheral, observer and broadcaster roles, GATT server and client, and event-driven, asynchronous and thread safe GATT/GAP and L2CAP APIs. The S130’s ability to support concurrent multi-link central and peripheral roles makes it an ideal choice for Bluetooth Smart hubs that are not smartphones or tablets.
Other S130 SoftDevice features include an Over-The-Air Device Firmware Upgrade (OTA-DFU) capability that leverages the Nordic nRF51 Series SoCs’ flash architecture for in-the-field product firmware updates.
A SoftDevice is Nordic’s self-contained software stack for nRF51 Series SoCs that incorporates a unique separation of RF protocol and application code. Since Nordic’s nRF51 Series’ launch in June 2012, SoftDevice performance has been increasingly enhanced by successive revisions. The SoftDevice is a key element of the unique software architecture of Nordic’s multiple award-winning nRF51 Series SoCs.
Employing an architecture that cleanly separates the Bluetooth Smart, ANT or 2.4GHZ proprietary SoftDevice from the developer’s application code removes the need for the engineer to struggle with integration of their code as part of a vendor-imposed application development framework. This separation ensures the stack and application software operate independently, but communicate when necessary via event-driven APIs.
“The S130 protocol stack is all about advanced Bluetooth Smart connectivity with our nRF51 Series SoCs,” comments Thomas Embla Bonnerud, Director of Product Management at Nordic Semiconductor. “It supports all Bluetooth Smart roles in combination with the relaxed role restriction features in Bluetooth 4.1 enabling, for example, a Bluetooth Smart device to be connected to a smartphone and multiple sensors at the same time. We believe support for complex network topologies is a key enabling technology for our nRF51 Series SoCs for the next wave of wearable devices and emerging applications like home and industrial automation.”
S130 alpha release is available now, with full production release scheduled for Q4 this year.
The S130 is delivered as a SoftDevice for Nordic’s nRF51 Series ICs and as such it is a pre-compiled binary with no link time dependencies to application code. Customers who are interested to test this new software should contact the wireless team of Rutronik to get the latest informations and updates.
